Why The Backlash To Shane Gillis Isn’t All About Women. It’s About Sex.

When Shane Gillis opened his “Saturday Night Live” monologue on October 10, joking that he’d been away from the gym so long he didn’t know “women just dress like whores now,” the Internet caught fire. Dan Levy said that short shorts don’t make women whores and that jokes like Gillis’s perpetuate an environment in which sexual assault flourishes. Comedian Phoebe Robinson described the bit as “misogynist, lazy *ss, hack… disdain” masked as comedy. On “Today,” Jenna Bush Hager asked who Gillis was to comment on women’s bodies.

Meanwhile, much of the backlash played off Gillis’s wording. Singer Maren Morris posted a workout video captioned “me being a wh0re at the gym.” Former SNL cast member Ego Nwodim posted a gym selfie captioned “whore reporting for duty.”

It seems that, for progressives, the word isn’t the problem — rather, it’s who says it.

Gillis’s wording was crude. As a young woman who works out in short shorts, it would alarm me if an older man thought of me as a “whore,” let alone called me one. On that logic, the pundits have a point.

But progressives helped manufacture the vulgarity Gillis speaks of. They criticize him while championing a culture that tells women sexual self-display is liberation. Consider the pattern: in 2011, a Toronto police officer told students that women should avoid dressing like sluts or risk being victimized. Collective outrage sparked SlutWalk, which spread to more than 200 cities in 40 countries and turned a slur into a rallying cry. “Slut,” “hoe,” and “whore,” were not just reclaimed, but popularized. Pop culture followed. Miley Cyrus twerked on Robin Thicke at the 2013 VMAs; Nicki Minaj framed her record-setting “Anaconda” music video as sexual empowerment; Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion’s explicit song “WAP” debuted at No. 1 and was promptly coded as a feminist anthem. Meanwhile, women’s clothing has undergone a major transformation, driven by business executives, designers, and consumers — athleisure that would have passed for underwear a generation ago is now the default uniform. 

As our culture has sexualized, progressives have aided in it by shaming critics. Critics of the song were told their objections were sexist. Some liberals now equate freedom with hypersexuality, and if you’re uncomfortable with the latter, then they want you to keep quiet or leave the gym! In essence, the liberal mantra for hypersexuality boils down to freedom and comfort for me, but not for thee.

As convenient a dictum as that is, it ignores human nature. Normalizing something means normalizing it for everyone. Liberal culture normalized sexual language with a vengeance. Whether it counts as empowerment or misogyny depends mostly on which political side is talking. 

The double standard doesn’t stop at a word. As White House Press Secretary Katie Zacharia made her national debut, left-leaning pundit Jimmy Kimmel wasted no time mocking her looks on his show, implying she got the job for being pretty and displaying a photo of her at the gym in revealing workout clothes. No Instagram sermons followed; Dan Levy did not record a video.

Gillis didn’t single women out. In the same monologue, he mocked men, gay men, his sisters, and himself, calling himself fat and ugly. He presents himself as an average Joe from Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, who talks like men do on job sites and in group chats. Such a register can be coarse about women — and it shouldn’t be. But it is the same vulgarity that progressive culture spent the last decade normalizing.

As a young woman, I welcome real conversations about cultural hypersexuality. It is not necessarily empowering; studies link sexualization to body shame, depression, and low self-esteem, and a meta-analysis found that sexualizing media makes people more likely to view themselves as objects. It also invites mockery of women who don’t conform, like the Catholic mother whose letter asking Notre Dame students to reconsider leggings was spoofed line by line on Facebook. It politicizes every piece of clothing I buy.

But fixing hypersexuality’s ills requires accountability from both sides of the aisle, particularly from those who champion it while attacking a comedian for noticing. Gillis just entered the gym, saw the hypersexual culture he lives in, and referenced it on television. The outrage isn’t about what he said — it’s that he is on the wrong side.

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Sydney Jezik is a senior at Brigham Young University and a Young Voices contributor.